Tag: zen

Experiencing No-Time: A Zen Perspective

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One of my favourite things to ponder is time from the perspective of Zen Buddhism. Zen is a strange beast and strangest of all is the experience of a different sense of time. Often when people begin meditation they notice a new sense of time, of a greater sense of spaciousness. There is a famous Zen saying that goes something like this:

You should sit in meditation for 30 minutes per day, unless you are too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.

If you think you are “too busy” and this is something you say to yourself too often, then you will always feel rushed and stressed. It possible to enjoy life as it unfolds without this sense of rush. The deepening sense of this is the experience of “no-time”.

This perspective is extremely radical. It doesn’t make logical sense and perhaps doesn’t even sound rational. With these caveats I want to share with you something written by one of my koan teachers, Arno Hess. I hope you enjoy it. It is from the pathwayzen.org.au website, he shared it recently for the new year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR by Arno Hess

This is the time we wish each other a Happy New Year. Fortunately, like tomorrow, it never comes and few of us realise the implications the concept of time and its categorisation has on our wellbeing. 

Since there is no past, no present (we can’t stop time even for a nanosecond) and of course no future, time is a human invention the absence of which some label eternity or no-time.

The concept of time, through memory and imagination, allows us to categorise the past, present and future, as well as to collectively get to a bus-stop and for a bus to leave at an agreed moment. All in all a very useful invention, that according to some sources on Wikipedia, is estimated to have begun with sundials around 3500 BCE in Egypt. 

Today, it is hard for us to even imagine an existence without the concept of time. Our entire world-view and self-image is so intertwined with time that even the thought of there being no-time, can evoke confusion and even anger. 

Most of us only contemplate the implications of no-time when we are confronted with a direct experience of no-time. This can occur as a result of a meditation practice, as we deliberately stop the flow of thinking and instead concentrate on a given object of concentration or simply sit with naked awareness. 

No-time is obscured by thinking, as thinking is predominantly about the past or imagined future and does not allow our awareness to rest and recognise our timeless dimension. 

For those that have experienced a moment of no-time, it can, depending on the intensity of the experience, have life changing consequences as our identity and core beliefs can be exposed as illusions once it clicks that there is no-time. This is different to knowing no-time through a reasoned approach, which does not have the same powerful effect. This is why reading or hearing about these things does not promote the necessary paradigm shift.
  
Really getting that there is no-time can have a further consequence of crumbling the foundation of our constructed ego-self, the existence of which is dependent on time categorisations. Birth and death are powerful examples. 

Those who have had a no-time experience know experientially, that time categorisations continuously reinforce not only the illusion of selfhood, but also the illusion of separation from our infinite nature.

The notion of “self”, for most, starts at birth and evolves through our imagination and conditioned beliefs to the separate person we think we are in time. However, once we experience no-time the sense of “I” is dissolved into a non-separated timeless dimension. At the same time, the “I” appearing as a separate identity we have created and nurtured for so long can not be obscured; we simply gain another reference point, co-existing or merging and informing from then on, all our deliberations. 

A famous Zen koan points to this as a question: “Who were you before your mother was born?” The Bible also makes reference to this with the famous “I am who I am” in Exodus 3:14. where God identifies himself as omnipresent. This omnipresence is no-time. And again, W.E.H. Stanner, the famous Australian anthropologist, criticised his English colleagues for incorrectly translating the world dreamtime. His translation was “everywhen”.

The concept of time continues to bind us both mentally and psychologically. Expectations, grief, remorse, shame, grudges, etc., through memory, are time-based mental concepts that continue to keep us imprisoned in our head space, dominating our mental life.

When the illusion of time is exposed through a direct experience, be it as a glimpse or a longer lasting event, it tends to further unbind us from self-imposed conditioned beliefs that relied on time and that, until then, kept reinforcing our apartheid in the form of a dualistic consciousness binding us to samsara. 

Thus, those who have had a no-time or kensho experience as we also call it in Zen know, that there is no such thing as a new year or tomorrow, or happiness or sadness. These, among others, are merely time-based mental constructs that we gravitate towards as being real or goals or ideals which ultimately never satisfy us due to their impermanent nature. 

To free ourselves from this perpetual time-based tyranny or samsara (cycle of life) as it is called in Buddhism, we should experience at least once, a glimpse of eternity, to see existence as it really is.

The deep insight we gain through this experience opens up a unified perspective and a reference point that has the power to stop discriminations between us and the world around us despite it appearing to be otherwise.

This new perspective informs all other perceptions including the concept of time. It reconciles and heals the wounds of separation and gives us a glimpse of all-at-oneness, no “I”, just this!

Mud, Sand and Weeds

A very short Zen story of journey and place

By Genkai Phil

OzZen Yarrawarra Retreat, May 2025

Photo by Jamie Irvine

The track starts out firm, winding through tall forest of eucalypts, paperbarks and she-oaks.

Moving downwards it soon becomes muddy.

Oh shit! I’m wearing thongs, the world’s most unstable footwear. I take them off.

Soon marveling at the quality of clayey soil, at once both slippery and sticky.

The track, an old and rutted road in parts, is full of watery holes, cloudy and mysterious. How deep? I avoid stepping into them in bare feet, perhaps there are hazards. Tree roots, broken glass, bits of metal.

The mud starts to give way to sandier substrates. Firmer, meandering paths of animal feet or human passing.

I am soon in amongst the weeds, dotted among heathy shrubs, wound up in grasses and sedges. I could get lost in here. Clinging, tangled up, scratchy. Tick ridden.

Small billabongs appear, home to frogs, birds, fish and iridescent dragonflies. Probably tiger snakes!

The back of a dune slopes before me. Gritty and unstable. Slow going, nature’s speedhump.

I can hear it before I see it. The whumping of waves along the steep shoreline.

I have spent many years, decades actually, playing in the fringes of the Pacific vastness. 

I have experienced much joy and learnt many lessons.

I am intimate with the shapes and heights of waves. The directions they come from and the spaces between them. The way the wind sparkles and rips up the surfaces.

Swept along the shore in the drift, pulled out in rip currents. Riding high and fast, being held under and fighting for breath.

Yet, many mysteries remain beyond the edge of things. A vast deepness and expanse. Creatures benign, playful, life giving, monstrous.

A muddy track, a sandy shore, trees, shrubs, grasses and weeds.

All gifts from the cosmos.

Gassho.

Photo by Phil Pisanu

The Experience of Intimacy in Zen

Talk from OzZEN Zazenkai in Sawtell 2nd March 2025. Intimacy in Zen is discussed in terms of two aspects of 1. presence with all of life, and 2. emotional availability and vulnerability. A complete offering of ourselves, unmasked.

This brings forth the character of the Bodhisattva as: simple, joyful, and open to life’s possibilities.

We mention “Intimacy and Commitment” from Ordinary Mind Zen teacher Elihu Genmyo Smith’s book “Everything is the way”. We mention three koans: The Hands and Eyes of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion (Blue Cliff Record Case 89), The National Teacher’s Monument (Blue Cliff Record Case 18), and Dizang’s “Not knowing is most intimate” (Book of Serenity Case 20).

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

The Character of the Buddha

The qualities perfected by the Buddha are the paramitas: generosity, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, wisdom. We see these qualities in the Pali Suttas on right speech, and helpful here are two suttas in the Middle Length Discourses, MN58 and MN41. The Buddha is the embodiment of the perfections and so when he speaks of, for example, right speech, he is describing himself.

Then we look at speech and silence in the koan collections. The trifecta of koans in the Blue Cliff Record, Cases 70, 71, and 72, all revolve around the koan: “How can words be spoken when your mouth is sealed shut?” And, finally, we venture onto Case 3 of Record of Empty Hall – “The World-Honored One Finally Pays Attention.”

Opening to Love

Here we go from St Francis of Assisi’s Prayer for Peace, to the Zen Koan “I have already become like this”1. From there we accompany “Seven Wise Women in the Charnel Grounds”2 and then see what thirteenth century Zen priest Eihei Dōgen has to say about “Birth and Death” in his fascicle of that name.3

1 Susan Murphy’s take on Case 41 of Transmission of Light from her book Red Thread Zen

2 Case 9 from The Hidden Lamp collection edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon

3 “Birth and Death (Shōji)” translated by Arnold Kotler and Kazuaki Tanahashi from Moon in a Dew Drop edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi.

Image by winterseitler from Pixabay

Meeting Yourself Along The Way

This Zen meditation guides you in and takes you tripping along, riding on the breath, through some old Zen stories. Where will you go?

The first is a re-telling of “A Parable” from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. This story sets up a persuasive set of circumstances which leads someone (and that someone is us) to discover the completeness of the simple act of enjoying eating a strawberry.

Two koans are featured, both are from The Gateless Gate by Koun Yamada (adapted below).

Case 30 “Mind is Buddha”

Taibai asked Baso in all ernestness, “What is Buddha?” Baso answered, “The very mind is Buddha.”

      VERSE 
      The blue sky, the bright day. 
      It is most detestable to hunt around; 
      If, furthermore, you ask, "What is Buddha?" 
      It is like shouting your innocence while holding the loot.

Case 36 “Meeting a Person Who Has Accomplished the Way”.

Goso said, “If you meet a person on the path who has accomplished the Way, do not greet them with words or silence. Tell me, how will you greet them?”

      VERSE 
      Meeting on the path a person who has accomplished the Way, 
      Do not greet them with words or silence. 
      It is right in your face; 
      If you want to realise, realise on the spot.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

From July 2023